Refill Is the New Recycle: Make the Switch to Refillable Household Cleaning Products
Yikes! Your washing up liquid just ran out. So you buy a new bottle. You might have a great idea to upcycle the old plastic bottle into something else. But when you inevitably buy a new one from the supermarket you have another bottle to find a use for. And there are only so many spare bottles you can keep in that cupboard under your sink.
So you might eventually end up recycling your used washing up liquid, anti-bac, laundry detergent packaging and bottles. And that's a good step to reducing waste in your household.
But there's an even better way of cutting down on the amount of packaging that goes to landfill (even better than recycling). And that is to use a cleaning refill service!
The Future Is Refill: Time to Switch to Refill Cleaning Products
Watch Short: Five Reasons to Shop at a Zero Waste or Refill Shop
The Plastic Problem
When you use a refillable washing up liquid, you cut down the amount of plastic that you use every week. And as a planet, we really do need to do something about plastic.
One unmissable example is The Great Pacific Garbage patch. It is twice the size of France. The collection of rubbish is constantly growing as a whirlpool of ocean currents bring together our ill-disposed rubbish and plastics.
Yep, it would take an estimated 67 ships 1 year to clean up less than 1% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is just the visible plastic. While plastic breaks down over hundreds of years, it never truly goes away and is instead reduced to tiny microplastics. These bits are too small to see with the naked eye and are even small enough to be eaten by tiny plankton. In turn, these plankton are gobbled up by fish. Which means, eventually, we are eating the plastic that we threw in the sea to start with. Microplastics have even been found in the placentas of unborn babies.
For the sake of people and planet we all need to do something about this. We don't currently have a good solution to fishing microplastics out of the sea since a lot of it has fallen to the bottom of the ocean.
An easy first step is ensuring that we optimise the things we do on a daily basis to be less wasteful. And that of course includes washing up, doing the laundry and cleaning the house.
In the case of the refill station we have at Green Heart Collective, the big containers that we get from Suma get sent back to be refilled. This means there's a circular loop where we don't have to create a bunch of extra plastic just to clean our houses!
What's more, using 20 litre containers in a refill shop can cut carbon emissions by as much as 43.9%, when compared with equivalent volume of single-use plasic bottles (Suma x Rattle Ghyll July 2023).
Refill Price List 2024 - What You Can Expect to Pay to Refill Your Household Cleaning Products
This is how we price our refills at Green Heart Collective, which gives you an idea for how much it costs. The brand we use is ecoleaf from Suma which is natural, plant-based and free from nasty chemicals.
Washing up liquid refill: £2.50/litre
Laundry Liquid refill: £3.40/litre
Toilet cleaner refill: £2.75/litre
Anti-bacterial multi-surface cleaner refill: £2.75/litre
You can bring any container to fill up. However, we strongly advise that you buy a prefilled ecoleaf container (or apply a ecoleaf sticker) that has a list of the active ingredients of each product in case of accidental consumption.
Refill Station Near Me
For refills to work, they need to be convenient. As convenient as visiting a supermarket. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of places you can visit to refill your cleaning products.
There are lots of different places you can use, including the Refill.org.uk app and HappyCow. But you could also search online for terms like "zero waste shop near me" or "plastic free shops near me".
And if you live in Gateshead or find yourself walking past our shop on Gateshead High Street, why not pop in and use our refills!
Read More: The Most Sustainable Eco-Friendly Packaging Ideas: Reuse
